Public Bank pre-tax profit up 2.1% to RM2.5b

KUALA LUMPUR: Public Bank Bhd’s pre-tax profit for the first half year ended June 30, 2012 rose by 2.1% to RM2.49 billion from RM2.43 billion in the same period of 2011.

Its revenue increased to RM6.83 billion from RM6.16 billion previously.

In a statement today, Public Bank said it has maintained its pole position among Malaysian banking groups in terms of profitability with the highest net return on equity of 24.7%.

“Our asset quality and cost efficiency continued to be the best among the domestic peers, with the lowest gross impaired loan ratio of 0.8% and cost-to-income ratio of 31.4%,” it said.

Founder/chairman, Teh Hong Piow, said the group’s gross loans increased at an annualised rate of 10.8% to RM187.3 billion as at end-June this year and domestic loans grew at a stronger rate of 12.3%.

Teh said the bank has declared a first single-tier dividend of 20%, resulting in a total dividend payout of RM700 million.

He said the group’s domestic customer deposits grew by an annualised rate of 12%.

On prospects, he said, the group would remain focused on retail banking and financing business, while maintaining its prudent credit and sound risk management policies.

“We expect to maintain our earnings momentum and record satisfactory performance in the second half of this year,” he said.

- Bernama

Comments

Readers are required to have a valid Facebook account to comment on this story. We welcome your opinions to allow a healthy debate. We want our readers to be responsible while commenting and to consider how their views could be received by others. Please be polite and do not use swear words or crude or sexual language or defamatory words. FMT also holds the right to remove comments that violate the letter or spirit of the general commenting rules.

The views expressed in the contents are those of our users and do not necessarily reflect the views of FMT.